Current technology provides notification of email received, text message SMS, call waiting, phone mail waiting, updates to websites, blogs, and various social media sources; letting a user know that an electronic communication has been received. More recently, communications may include notifications from home appliances, security systems, automobile maintenance, entertainment devices and other electronic devices enabled with the appropriate sensor and communication configurations.
Most notifications are in the form of an audible alert, producing a recognizable tone or sequence of tones when a communication is received by a programmable electronic device. Some notifications may be in a visual format, such as a calendar or appointment alert that may pop up on a display screen with a message associated with the communication. In still other cases, a notification may combine both audio and visual alerts.
Notifications are helpful for reminding a user of important scheduled events, tasks to be completed, and awareness that forms of communication or updates to web pages, websites, or social media sites have been received or have been updated. However, notifications can cause distraction to users engaged in activities requiring high levels of focus. For users that receive update notifications from rich site summary (RSS) services of multiple websites, and who participate in many social media sites and applications, the frequency of notifications may also be extremely annoying.
Notification control typically includes all-or-nothing user decisions or requires users to input extensive profile setting details that are time consuming and provide generic control at best.